Day Off

I've had such a lovely day off today, Gav and i went across to the Ironbridge Gorge, i'm amazed at how near it is to us, it's barely an hour away and we had a lovely walk in gorgeous sunshine and lunch at the Tea Emporium.  We'd gone there to collect some vintage sweet scales that Gav bought on Ebay for our lovely retro kitchen and had to pick them up from the Jackfield Tile Museum (photos below). 

I've done two more assemblage pieces for my upcoming exhibition, the preparation is going really well so far.

 Ironbridge

 and the scales

Arranged....at last...

Exhibition

Artist Tina Gilmore

The Old Bell Museum, Montgomery

5th August -11th August

Well that's it, it's booked!  My first art exhibition, I Can't believe i've done it.  I was originally planning to have this exhibition at Indigo Moon, but this will be better for me as we'll have lots of friends and family staying here at The Armoury through August and it will be difficult to do the exhibition without utilising our kitchen area.  I'll have use of the conference room to the side of the museum for a week to exhibit and I will be the first of three exhibitions in August!  It's very nerve racking and exciting.

Which means... i have about six weeks to finish preparing. Nearly all my artwork is done, i just have some finishing off elements to do, but then i have to think about making up some more business cards etc and then how to advertise/market it.

So....see you there if you can make it

xxxxx

Finding Treasures

Monday is our day off here, the only day we close the shop and do other things.  My Beautiful (nearly nineteen years old) baby girl has been here with us this weekend with her friend Kasey, which was lovely as they helped in the shop and I not only got time to spend with my lovely girl, but i got to spend time in my art room too.  The plan was to tidy it up as with all the recent work i've been doing on my assemblages it's got into a bit of a mess, anyway, needless to say the tidying up didn't happen!!! 

This is a page in my sketchbook, birds, i draw and colour so i can experiment with blending colours, which i code.  These were done with Caran D'ache water colour pencils and it's great for practicing.

The weather here is beautiful today, gav and i had a lovely lunch at the Castle Kitchen, we sat in the garden in beautiful sunshine and later took Lizzie for a long walk over to Offas Dyke where, again, she managed to find a dirty muddy puddle to lie down and roll over in!!!!!

Yesterday we popped over to Churchstoke to the Sunday market, and i ended up in the pound shop looking for treasures for my assemblages.  I found some really nice odds and ends in the jewellery section but these were an amazing find. 

They're little wooden hangers for keys etc with a cute little wooden keyring to go with them, all packaged up.  My plan was to take the image off the front and do a nice little mixed media art painting on them.  The keyring part i'll use for brooches.  I got five of them to try out...

 ....and Voila...This is my first one and it's sold already!!!!

 

This is another idea!  Gav and i purchased these little pictures from one of our suppliers, but when they arrived they were of quite poor quality, print wise, but the frames were amazing, so they ended up in my art studio.

This is the back and you can see that they're nice deep box frames that i can use for assemblages too!

This is what i did with the first one and already someone has their eye on it!  I have four more to use up.

Ha! hang on there's more... this was a small metal notice which said "a spoilt rotten dog lives here" and even though thats true. i still thought it would be great to paint on.

So i'm back off to the pound shop tomorrow to get more supplies!  This is another Moleskine notebook painting, i've done two so far,and if i can stop Nicole from nicking the blank ones I have, i can't wait to do more and display in the shop, i know they'll sell really well.

These photos were taken about ten minutes ago when the rain started here in Montgomery.  It got very dark and ominous and then the heavens opened, a real downpour and after a mad dash outside to get my washing in and getting soaked in the process, i took these from our middle floor window looking out across Broad Street gardens.

"The best gift your children can receive from you

is your presence (HK).

In your eyes, and your heart your children should be, special, beautiful, amazing, clever and wonderful in their own individual way.  As parents you should have no favourites amongst them and the capacity to look beyond words and actions to understand them, to give freely and bountifully and what's not in your hand, will be in your heart.  A closed parental heart can never really know their child, it's an open heart that invites them to stay in your life, without it they will be strangers and forever lost to you in a personal way.

When i started this blog a few years ago I really didn't expect to still be doing it now, i thought that i'd lose interest, but as time went on i found it incredibly healing to carry on. It helped me focus on my life through a very difficult time.  This week Gavin and I heard some sad news concerning some really lovely and special people in our lives and it got us both thinking that life does sometimes throw bad things your way without your permission or any human input.  We don't have total control healthwise over our lives and there is no rhyme, reason or fairness to what people can suffer, it makes us vulnerable.  We should be ever more focussed on ourselves, our loved ones, our lives and our achievements because what we do have control of is how we use the precious time we do have. 


I've made many big and small decisions to live the dream i've settled into. For me life now feels more manageable as far as routine is concerned, a perfect balance of family time, work time, alone time and fun time. On my recent wedding day a close friend commented that I seemed much happier these days, and it's true. I feel peaceful and more in love with my life than ever before, I feel inspired creatively in ways I haven't felt in a long time and am so excited about new projects and forthcoming exhibitions that I can't sleep, but It's good when that happens. I find that I'm an entirely new person and although still living with an open exposed heart, protected in a new life that finally feels familiar and perfect - one that I thank my lucky stars for every second of every day. Thank you goddess, spirit, universe, world, and every dear and gorgeous soul in my life that helped me through.

Just thought i'd show you a few details of some more assemblages i've been working on...

These two are really funny, i picked them up a few weeks ago at the Sunday market, not sure what i'm going to do with them yet, but they're quite quirky....or maybe scary!!!

Gav and I bought this kitchen unit this afternoon from the Montgomery auction for seventy quid - bargain. We loved the aged look of it and that the inside of the cupboards are blue, it looks fab.  We're really getting on with planning our free standing kitchen, we have two really nice Victorian Housekeeper cupboards which are currently being utilised in the shop.  We've decided to take away a section of the horrible fitted kitchen that was there when we moved in to fit in one of the cupboards, it'll be worth it though.

Here it is with our TG Green wedding presents on it. 

The milk jug and two pots in the cupboards are old TG Green,

the other stuff below it is modern and it all looks gorgeous.

This bit is for dirty laundry apparently!!

Knife marks and hot pot burns from times gone by!

 

This sign in our shop makes me laugh,

 it's brought a smile to a few people's faces today too

Little potted flowers

Cute little owls

Telephones

Gav had a gorgeous pink/cream one on the unit,

but he sold it today and replaced it with the 'genie' one you see here. 

We've sold loads of phones lately, Gav can barely keep up with converting them at the moment.

Another view of the shop after our latest deliveries of new stock

Hmmm... our gorgeous Lizzie Wizz after her shower! She's so cute, look at that face, she looked like a punk rocker!

When she jumped in that muddy ditch the other week she didn't clean properly and i noticced when i was brushing her in the garden the other day, that her underneath was still caked in mud, deep in her fur next to her skin and all her hair was matted. 

She doesn't like the shower by the way, you'd have thought she was going to her execution, i had to get in with her in the end!! 

"It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them. And every new dog who comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are."

--Unknown

More Assemblage Art

The weather here today has been so bleak, raining and cold all day, the shop was quiet so both Gav and I sat in the kitchen just chatting together, and playing with Lizzie. We had a nice lunch and planned the changes we want to sort out in the shop and then looked through some magazines trying to decide what we want to do in the house now that we have a bit more time to think about it. There's no rush to get things done though, we have a massive bedroom with beautiful old beams and oak floorboards and we've been looking for an antique four poster bed and a persian rug that would suit it. There's a fine art auction in Shrewsbury in the next few weeks so we might find what we're looking for there.

These are details of some more assemblage pieces i've been working on for the exhibition, I've not finished them yet but i have eleven pieces now, all of which need some finishing touches.

I love these Moleskine Cahier journals, these are a few of the ones i bought at a bargain price! lucky me...

...so i thought i'd do some artwork on the covers which i've seen other artists do and thought i'd have a go. I did this one for Jessica as she was feeling a bit sad!

Eye candy...gorgeous crocheted flowers from Carmen at Annie Design on Etsy, i ordered loads of them, i fell in love with the gorgeous colour combinations she uses. I have lots of ideas for these for the shop i don't know where to start.

I opened some new packs of bath mallows in the shop the other day, how yummy do they look? and the smell is gorgeous.

"The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind"

- Wayne Dyer